Employee engagement - A lesson from 100 year ago

You know how sometimes the most obvious things are looking you in the face? I've been looking for examples of employee engagement stories. The bad stuff, and I mean really bad, cringeworthy examples of ill conceived communications, the well intentioned ideas that backfired or the complete and utter miscalculation of some of the bosses, we have all probably come across at some point. You know exactly what I am talking about. And, of course, to get a bit of balance, the stories about the truly amazing stuff too.

And then I remembered..... how could I forget? 

I am a direct product of one of the greatest employee engagement stories of all time. The story that created one of the world's largest companies and boxes full of household name brands that have become intertwined with virtually everybody's life. If you having been thinking that employee engagment is about just being being a bit more  cuddly, or that it  might be a 'nice thing' to put a few bits of gym kit in the basement for your staff, o rmaybe put in a shower, I am here to tell you that you really don't know the half or it. 

I am a child of a village called Port Sunlight, created over 100 years ago to look after the workers for the Lever Brothers soap factory, by one of the greatest social philanthopists the commercial and industrial world has ever see. It is still there, in all its pristineness, just a twenty minute drive from the Pier Head in Liverpool. A magical, inspiring place of space and calm that sets the benchmark for how to treat and nuture your talent; your employees. 


Growing up in the village a bit like going through the wardrobe to Narnia It was just a perfect place to grow up but, more than that,  it raised my expectations and lifted my eyes to new horizons and, maybe most of all provided me along with the humanitarian lessons, that a staff’s welfare isn't just a nice thing to do and think about, but has a bottom line effect that can help create, and this is not to any degree hyperbole, an empire. The Unilever Group now includes the ultra brands of the likes of Lynx and Ben & Jerry’s and employs hundreds of thousands across the Globe. All because of palm oil and one man's vision of how to add value to it.

Today the village is still very much as it was. Although there are naturally more cars it still is remarkably peaceful. The wide vistas, pavements and green spaces are all still their, manicured and coiffured. The buildings, columns, walls and the numerous nods to a world history of architectural styles are devoid of any graffitti, anywhere. At the centre of the village, the hub holding the glorious spikes of its structure together, is the stunning war memorial, one of the most glorious and moving examples of the art form built anywhere.  

The outdoor swimming pool, heated to almost tropical delights by the factory, in which thousands of us Sunlight children learnt to swim, is now a garden centre. But pretty well everything else is still there as it was when it was built 120 years ago - although the slopes we rode our bikes up and down and the statues and fountains we climbed over, seem a lot smaller these days.

There are hundreds of stories that feature the founder, William Hesketh Lever and his wife Elizabeth, and what they did on a day-to-day basis for the welfare of their staff, but I think one story epitomises what they may have felt about what was the right thing to do.

Imagine it is the early 1900's. The factory has blossomed since its opening in 1887, and new demand means they are opening their first factory overseas in Brussels, so what does Lever do?

He shuts the factory and the village for a weekend. He takes 2000, yes that's 2000 of them, on a trip. That's pretty well everyone in the village. They are used to the paid for annual trips to indulge in the delights of Blackpool, the garden parties in their own home, the birthday presents for every child, often delivered by Elizabeth herself. This time, they are given an adventure few would ever dream of. The employees are all given colour coded tickets to board specially hired colour coded trains, (you could do that in those days), to take them to the English Channel, then by ferry to Ostend, where this small victorian army is collected up by more painted trains. On their arrival in Brussels that are wined and dined at a string of restaurants across the city and then given a tour in a fleet of 300 wagons and landaus before the opening ceremony that evening. The village's own 40 piece orchestra play to entertain them.

This was in 1900. Can you imagine challenges of this logistical feat? They did have the help of another famous company, that is still going strong, one Thomas Cook, but even so? Can you imagine asking your board to write that cheque? And why did he do it?

It was I believe pretty simple really - he realised that, 100 years before we ‘invented’ the concept of work life balance, 60 years before the UK’s welfare state and free health care, 100 years before the creation of the EU and maximum working week directives, that the single most important factor in creating a happy and willingly cooperative and productive workforce was to build within it a sense of belonging.  And he also was always mindful that you cannot build anything with people who do not care and that his own personal wealth arose from their labours.

This wasn't just a one off either. Change is not a single event. The list of events and goes on and on. I have scores of stories about the ideas and initiatives, of his innovation and sometimes down right cunning; how he introduced a maximum 36 week for  all female staff - this was in the 1890’s for heavens sake - free medical treatment in their own hospital, workers education programmes, it just goes on and on. Although undoubtedly driven by pure benevolence, he wasn’t just being Father Christmas, it was also had a pragmatic bottom in too. Something he was very, very aware of. 

He makes you feel a tad of ashamed with our miserly efforts, and IC managers worrying ourselves to death about whether the intranet works.

History is often a useful reference, but don't we we all need a 'root's story anyway?


Please feel to post your example of the good or bad internal communications or employee engagement   below,  anonymously if you like or give is us link to something, or just share.

Innovation Hero

Just been reading  my innovation heroes, new book 'Beyond the obvious' Loved it, check it out at

http://philmckinney.com/

The Case for Collaboration.

Henry Chesbrough’s  concept of  ‘Open Innovation’,  (IO) or collaboration, has been steadily gaining traction for the last ten years, but the necessities of the challenges of reducing costs and adding value and being more innovative, for both product service and process improvements means that it is a very bright spot on the radar for many public and private sector organisation, SME’s and academia. If not that its just a little fuzzy image.

For those of you who are aware of IO but are seeking some clarity and trying to get a handle on whether it might be time to take that leap, here are some Beautiful Questions that might help you decide.

Firstly, just to allay some misconceptions. What IO it isn’t?

It isn’t giving away the family silver

It isn’t about stealing or plagiarisation

It isn’t about commercial espionage

It might be about talent scouting and acquisition though ;)

Most of us start from the point of what we could call a 'Closed Innovation' position. The not invented here syndrome, the belief  that we have all the expertise we need to do what we need to do,  and that sharing knowledge is very risky, both at a personal and company level. The move to paddle on the shores of open Innovation requires that first we have to ask ourselves some searching and possibly painful questions, that change many assumptions.

So....

Do we really have all the smart people we need to deliver this?

…..Or do we need to get our smart people to work with other smart people?

To profit from our R&D do we really need to find, develop and distribute the product ourselves?  or…Does our internal R&D just claim part of the value of a much bigger pie?

Does it matter if, by doing do it all internally, that we are first to market?  Or do we have to originate the research to profit from it?

Do we know what are the real benefits of being first to market? Or ….  With a product or service is it better to have a business model that works better then the market first?

If we create tons of ideas, and have the most and the best will we really win? Or, if we make the best uses of external and internal ideas will that give us the best chance of success

Do we really need to control our IP? Or is it better for us to profit from others use of our IP and acquire others if it help us develop and improve our business model?

If you answer No to the first and Yes to the second then Open Innovation is your path.  If however you answer Yes to any of the first questions, then your competition will, in all likelihood, leave you behind sometime in the next 24 months, if they haven’t already.  Sorry!

Innovation is about not being small

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness which frightens us.

We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be so beautiful, talented, gorgeous, fabulous?" Actually, who are we NOT to be?

You are Child of God.

Your playing small does't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. This is not just in some of us, it is in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people the permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fears, our presence automatically liberates others.

Nelson Mandela 1997

Innovation cultures, Are these a myth? The view from half way up

Which comes first, Innovation or culture, is an old question. Do you need to have an innovation culture inbuilt within an organisation for it to be innovative? Or do you have to have innovation first to establish a vibrant organisational culture?

The problem to start off with is that we use this phrase innovative ‘culture’ very loosely.  It seems many to, at least, allude to, a place that has that warm fuzzy feeling, where one we can wing it,  suggest wacky ideas, take risks. It's fab here, come i on the water's lovely. However the real experience is that, at the very best, this type culture, the one all the CEO's wish we had of  only applies to a few like minded souls in any organisation anyway. Just having a culture, any culture, that is overlaid on existing assumptions values and experiences is very, very hard to achieve.  Some may say it's unrealistic. We can’t all be Willy Wonk.


Because the simple and big problem we face in any multi-person environment is that not everyone will buy into it anyway. and worse, some become active antagonistics towards it.

So how do you get innovation embedded into your organisation? Can it be done.? Yes it can. Here is another view. Maybe its semantics but I'd like to replace the word 'Culture' with another one.

The idea that 'culture' begats innovation is missing a more fundamental point and it is a bit of a red herring. It firstly assumes  that ideas grow because they have a culture? I'm not sure that's a valid cause and effect. They do because, if you look at it more closely, they get access to a network.  A network that will trash, thrash or bash ideas about;  polish, tweak and improve, often over months or years, without necessarily any process or control and that network importantly isn't necessarily just internal.


There is absolutely nothing new in this idea at all. The coffee shops of C17th Britain, the Lunatics, Renaissance Italy, Silicon Valley,  were all simply networks connecting to both internal and external sources.  It's not so much of a culture, more of the access to a network that lets ideas grow. One very important side point is not all innovations are initially market lead, and they shouldn’t be.  These historical networks prove that beyond doubt. They came up with ideas just for the hell of it.  I don’t think Darwin was looking at the IP rights!  

Just to give you a real life example of what i mean by network rather than culture. For two years now I've have been working, helping small and new start businesses figure out how to tell their story. We have a network of over 200 businesses in our tribe now. Most of the time what we do is not provide practical help, like how to write the copy, or what their web site should actually be saying, which is what we do the rat of the week, but often simple sanity checking. People within that tribe contribute to simply help out, with no direct advantage to their own bottom line; but by doing so get energy and input for their own ideas to develop. We have, accidentally  I have to admit, created an environment,  a density of network connections and opportunities for ideas to grow and flourish, to reproduce, to be killed off, to replenish. We have in effect an ecosystem, not a culture. And the major benefit is that working for Free on Fridays has made a subtle but nevertheless huge difference in the way I personally look at how to improve my innovation skills and our own products and services.

So, I prefer the idea of 'developing the network' than a culture. It makes a bit more sense to me and I am a simple soul. In purely pragmatic considerations it has achievable, definable ( and measurable) goals which keeps the bean counters happy. Changing a company's culture is way more scary than building a network, and virtually impossible if you already have inherited any 'culture' embedded beaviours.  Like any Local Government or a Health Trust or any Quango. 25 years in Change Management have shown me that it is largely a myth anyway. ( I can hear the sound of an army of consultants spinning in their expense accounts)   Evolution is a much better description, and that is initiated only by improving the storytelling skills and opportunities (Networks) for people to communicate. Hiking up the bandwidth for all types of internal and external communication increases exponentially the level of innovation in any organisation, be it a one man band solotrepreneur or a government department.

For any organisation you can only expect a small proportion of your work force to buy into the innovative principles and actions anyway and win their willing collaboration. One alternative could be in establishing sub-cultures like Lockheed’s Skunkworks, which has to function almost as a separate entity within an organisation or it gets strangled at birth, largely by bureaucracy or people protecting their job descriptions. But on the whole, the innovative cultures we would like to be working in and strive for, such as Apple, Google, Ideo and I'd humbly suggest  my own company, were all developed from the luxury of the position of a blank price of  paper, on which active innovation was a watermark and people are recruited who fitted that persona.  None of us had any legacy of unionisation, hierarchical management, inconsistent management, and communications skills that don't actually communicate anything, and all those preconceived ideas which we first have to overcome before we can even talk about being ‘Innovative’.

So, look at your network of communication, on line, off line, internally, externally with your customers, with your suppliers. Make water coolers spaces bigger, with seats! Give people time to talk

It's not necessarily about the link between culture and innovation, but communication which leads to innovation.  It's not about risk free, 'can do' cultures. You just won’t get them, not matter how hard you try. The challenge we face is that 'Everyone wants to change but nobody wants to change themselves' But, build your network of sharing, internally and externally an then you get ideas and innovation, and the rest of the work force, at least those that  have something to contribute. get dragged in when they see how much fun it can be.

It’s just my view.

The problem with brainstorming

Brainstorming, the 'no idea is too wacko' process, used by many as the key and sometimes the only technique  in the drive to be ‘innovative', is no where near as productive as we think.

The problem is, that like a storm, it is finite in time and  has an effect only in a  localised area. After the storm we get the blue skies, and everybody feels good but forgets  what the storm did. All the ideas, like the rain, wash away, the energy dies down and every one goes back to a normal life, doing what they do and have done.

It is just the start. We need to collect the rain and the wind and put it in a place where others can see it and play with them.

Rarely does any great idea come up in Isolation, and great ideas can take months, even years to come to fruition. Tim Berners-Lee, actually took ten years from his first ‘Enquire‘  progamme, his first idea for information sharing, to turn this into what we all use now, the  www. and only then as his idea was put into an environment where it was allowed to be encouraged at CERN.

Ideas need to connect to other ideas , they need to be put into places where they can be played with or tweaked or indulged a little. 

That is innovation management.

Internal communication and innovation

Internal communication is inseparably linked to the development of any innovative culture. Whether this is improving the quality of service, delivering competitive difference, delight for the customer, better business processes, reduced marketing costs. The list goes on and on. All of this great, good stuff, which we all strive for, comes at some cost in energy and investment in skills but success is fundamentally limited by the ability to communicate effectively up, down, sideways, inside outside. The CEO’s moaning frustration of ‘Why don’t they just get it, can’t they see that this is not just good for the company and them too’, misses the big point. That it is up to them, and them alone, to communicate and to lead that communication effectively. This is their first and most important job, because without that ability no process, no initiative, no change, no improvement that needs to work will work. It’s that simple.

Yet many senior managers still persevere with the shouting louder, quickly followed by the placating ‘its fun to work here’ gesture. People are way smarter than most managers give them credit for. And, it has to be said, that the human condition often makes us all way too smart for our own good sometimes. We, largely anyway, have a disproportionate capacity for creating our own misery from the most tenuous of reasons. From one instance of inconsistency, one poorly used word, one miss-timed email we come up with an infinite number of possibilities that puts us on the road to the Valley of Despond and the recruitment web sites.

It’s an inbuilt survival mechanism. We are the only animal that imagines the future. On a personnel and organisational level this can be both a blessing and a curse. While we may look at future where the taking of risk, or the success of some personal initiative could be met with praise and prizes, equally, if we fail it means embarrassment, the loss of respect from our peers and managers. So why should we take any risks at all? The response is, in most cases, that we don’t. Unless we are motivated to do so. And motivation does not come from a snappy Power Point presentation, an email, a rousing speech but from one simple belief. Trust. 

Trust that you have the freedom and power to act without reprisal or criticism. 

Trust that what the management says the management actually means. 

Trust that they are making the right decisions for the good of the organisation and you as individuals.

And the killer of trust comes down to one thing. Inconsistency. You don’t have to be a great orator, a great writer or storyteller, although that helps enormously to inspire trust. Just applying consistent messages and the demonstration of management walking the walk works. It just does. But, one piece of hanging thread, if pulled - which it will undoubtedly will be - can unravel any strategy, any good intention and kill the momentum for change.

Effective communication is the be all and end all of any organisation. The worst of it is that most managers feel that they are great communicators. No doubt their intentions are good and their heart is in the right place. But in the thousands I have worked with over the years there are only a handful who actually get it. They are the true innovators who know that it is not just about having that great idea, or clarity of vision but know how to sell their idea, to tell the story, who use their passion and are above all know that its about being consistent.

Innovation Handbook for CFO's

With over 25 years experience of throwing myself at brick walls of various heights and thickness, trying to develop a culture of innovation and creativity in a wide range or organisations, I can say, without any shred of doubt, that the biggest barrier to establishing an innovation culture is convincing senior management of its value, and showing them ways to measure its impact to justify investment. Sometimes these are innovations in themselves.

Less than 3% of companies have any innovation performance metrics and reporting systems in place and, those that do, are in the top 5% of top performers in their sectors. A coincidence maybe? Are you mad?

The Word cloud below illustrates some of the key  considerations and serves as a memory jogger for senior management when they are not just giving lip service into their annual company report or sales blurb that they are being 'innovative'. Most really haven't a clue what that really means. Although they would all like to be like Apple. Mmmm!

Or, you can simply carry on as you are, and watch as your competitors harness their innovation and creative talent and burst out of the recession first, leaving you trailing in their wake.  Like a dinosaur looking up at that big round thing in the sky wondering why it's getting bigger.

Innovation Management Top 20 tips

1. Don't always question.
I know it is what most of us do, and what the Gurus told you do in the old days of last year. They implored us to 'Question everything. Challenge every assumption'. You still do that, just don't get obsessed with it. Instead, revitalise the casual conversations and information sharing as a normal business practice. And devote as much as half of your time to developing that dialogue. You can't expect to learn a lot just by challenging your staff. They will, more often than not, give you the answer they think you want, especially if they have to give answers off the cuff. Welcome, unreservedly, one another's thoughts and opinions and give them time to respond.

2. Establish a nil tolerance for Mediocre Practice but don't polarise the process and focus too much effort on establishing Best Practice.
Instead focus on ways to eliminate worse practice. When is best good enough anyway? A Best practice will invariably come out in the end if you are initiating the other 19 ( or so) principles. Well a few of them anyway. Incrementally it is a much quicker fix, for both you and the customer. In any case the question you should be asking is 'Are you benchmarking yourself against the mediocre, the safe, and the obsolete? Is it a 'me to' action. Do you want to give Karaoke performance of Britney Spears or Ella Fiztgerald. For a lot of people Britney is good enough. But for some....

3. Actions SHOUT.
I'd like to introduce you to the CASER principle, with apologies to Gordon Gould, the first man to use the word, laser, whose acronym I have blatantly hijacked. (Laser actually stands for Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation for all you pub quizzers out there, which is why you shouldn't really spell it with a 'z'.)
I have made up my own version. CASER which stands for Creativity Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Results.

If you can vividly show the effect, good or bad that results from the implementation of their ideas you reinforce the feed back of the original signal. Or, as Spiderman puts it to Dr Octopus, you get 'harmonic reinforcement'. Show them that you take their ideas seriously, and they will trust you more seriously to share their ideas.

3. Actively Look Out.
Scan the horizon, not just through the myopia of market analysis or the telescope of your marketing or sales department. That is an awfully narrow field of view. And, have regard not just for at the usual suspects, the competitors in your field or your own market. Navel fluff picking isn't pleasant to look at and you eventually look silly or deranged.

Most of the good ideas don't come from your own staff (Or you for that matter). You are not the stewards of all things 'magnificent'. Humbleness is truly attractive and inspiring. Acknowledgement of others contribution wins friends and accomplices.

4. Experiment Persistently.
Assume nothing. Enlightened trial and error outperforms any planning of intellects however flawless their rationale.You can, and must, plan ahead to know where you want to go, and what steps you will have to make to get there. But then put the plan aside and focus on the first steps. Regularly stop to reflect on the action and repeat the process.

3. Let go of the need to be right. It's OK to make mistakes as long as you learn from them.
Your mistakes are your experience. Pass it on. If you malign failure, you destroy entrepreneurship, snuff out innovation and in the end you harm the company. If you "forgive and forget" because you want to be that great boss you always wanted to work for, that same mistake will be repeated twice or a dozen times. Failure is normal, accept it, move on but demand that lessons be learned and communicated through the entire organisation.

Expect no less from everyone in your organisation.

4. Empower but support
It is absolutely all right, positively, to give assignments to people who have never done it before. The codicil is that, if you do, then it is your responsibility as a manager to provide them with a network of expert advisors whom you trust. Legitimacy lies in competence as much as position in the organisation chart. Position without competence results in disaster. Competence without position results in helplessness.

5. Don't refer to the 'Internal organisation'.
Talk about specific people. Referring to other organisations of the company as "them" is laying the ground for future excuses about the lack of results for everyone.
Organisations are almost inevitably impersonal, complex, and change every 24 months anyway. People and communities however are far more stable, resilient and trustworthy.

7. Kill off internal client-supplier relationships.
The internal market approach is the very worst possible form of internal collaboration. A client-supplier relationship in a monopolistic environment is the epitome of bureaucracy. It damages the social network and value of the company and paralyses its ability to solve problems for the customer. If you want to reinforce the silo mentality that is the next best way of doing it.

8. Before deciding on a plan, always ask with whom the plan was discussed.
The raison d'etre of the corporate manager is not to come up with the bright ideas, but with ideas shared with other stakeholders. Reject all proposals and action plans bearing only the signatures of your staff.

9. Involve people collectively in your thinking.
If you merely want compliance (at best) rather than real commitment then use managerial authority to deploy programs and plans from the top-down. Then sit back and watch it all unravel. If you want people to adopt your views and act accordingly, you must engage in meaningful conversations with them, and not "cascade down" or "communicate messages". If you have a teenager you will l know exactly what I mean.
Think about the power of stories. No-one is won over by a PowerPoint slide, a chart, other peoples quotations, or an Excel spread sheet. Well they shouldn't be. Nor will they ever adopt for themselves another's goals. Intellectually in the short term it may possibly- short term in this case being the five minutes after the Ra-Ra speech until the next problem hits them as they get back to their desk. For medium or long-term participation you need to connect emotionally (How to do that? Well that is the tricky part and the reason why 99.999% of all managers, including you and me are not Steve Jobs. See The Beautiful Question Part 11 posting for a possible answer)

10. Management is not so much about delegating to individuals than about organising and empowering groups.
Effective action ("execution") in any organisation is all about coordination and synchronization. Speed of execution is best achieved by self-synchronisation of competent people who understand and trust each other. The first job of a manager is to detect who these people are and make sure they work together in the right setting (working group, project team, community of practice...) Or separate them if they or in a dysfunctional group. .

11. It's not about giving objectives.
It's about making sure they understand your intent.If they really understand your goals and if it makes sense to them, they will figure out what to do by themselves. It is by far more difficult to articulate a clear intent than to give objectives. Those that figure out that particular trick are the true leaders. Remember the power of the story.

12. Never give targets without negotiating them first.
Giving measurable quantitative targets without negotiating them with those responsible for making it happen is just bad management. But negotiate hard and if you do shift their comfort zone, give them the support to deliver. Not an excuse to fail.

13. Don't Squirrel knowledge
Don't think that you always know what information is 'good' for your staff. Let them know what you know, give them access to every document you have, unless it is explicitly confidential or for a damn good reason. Don't work on a "need to know" basis. No one ever said 'Oh, that Barry bloke, he communicated too much'. Let them sort out the information overload. There are plenty of tools and tricks to help them. Even if you do cocoon them they will always find out but via half-truths, conjecture, second-guessing, the water cooler whispers and arrive completely at the wrong picture. Paranoia is a part of almost every human activity so don't give it more oxygen. It is far easier to manage any fallout than motivate the disenchanted.

14. History is good- Look back.
Encourage the promotion of the myths and legends. Balance market studies, action plans, specifications etc. With case studies, lessons learned, good practices. Spend some time reflecting on past experiences. And ingrain all new employees and stakeholders with the story. Commitment to the past reaffirms the company's culture and the brand.

15. Don't promote people that sound smart, but those who make sure that smart things happen.
The company's promotion process is the primary driver of employees' emotional positivity. It isn't money, or perks or glory. It can build or destroy confidence or simply reinforce the CGAS attitude.

16. Don't expect dedication from someone who fears for his job.
All efforts are stalled by the fear of job loss. If you need to fire people, do it at warp speed, and make sure it appears to all as an exceptional event.

17. Never manipulate your staff. You actually can't!
Employees are hypersensitive to inconsistencies and incoherence across an organisation. They immediately detect every ripple of manipulation when they hear conflicting messages. Largely, because they are looking for them and we come circling right back to the paranoia thing again. Establish trusted relations with your peers first. Trust is the bandwidth of communication

18. Get yourself a knowledge technology coach.
Communication and collaboration technologies are dramatically changing. E-mail for collaboration is becoming extinct. You need to up your game.

Fail Like You Really Mean it

Innovation is all about risk and failure so....

Fail quick, fail fast, give yourself room to fail. Then write it up, learn from it. Share it put it where others can easily find it and move on.

Apart from keeping you fast on your feet it simply helps undermine the emotional baggage that failure implies and allows you to move on and take more risks. Prevarication wastes more money than any aspect of innovation management and we keep throwing good money and time after something which isn’t working. Risk and failure happen. Most things fail- get over it and move on to the next opportunity.

But the crucial factor learn from it, don’t repeat the same thing. Know what failure looks like and trust your gut instincts along with the metrics. Don’t rely on just the numbers.

And if you want to change innovation into stagnation, don’t bonus your management on individual project successes. They will just keep persevering and spend too much of their energy to find something to blame when it does go pear shaped. You end up paying twice. At least.

Value added innovation

There is new value phrase that I’m hearing. Heard it in the early eighties too. Remember them? The last recession? The phrase is ‘If you can save me money PDQ, I’ll buy it.

That's the new value proposition for today, and you'll do well to think about the phrase as you look to grow or maintain your top line.

The number one concern for many organisations today (beyond mere survival for some) is cost reduction. So, if you can give them the chance to do this quickly, they'll be willing to pay you a premium to do so

This line of thinking was reinforced when I spent time two weeks ago with some friends in the South West. They gave a up a small but very successful pharmacy chain and settled down to ‘have a life’ .They've got a solution that can help families save quite a bit of money on their overall holiday spend. Given the scope of the potential savings, and the fact that they have maintained growth despite economic turmoil, they've got a key innovation strategy nailed. It’s called a camp site, but one with electricity and wifi. And some of the most stunning scenery in England as a perfect after dinner treat. It helps if you have a good product to start with of course.

What can you learn from this line of thinking? Well the key questions to ask could be....

How can you partner up with your customers to help them achieve cost savings with what they would like to do?

How can you help them quickly achieve those cost savings : faster, say, than in the alternate economy of a few months past? Remember, faster is better.


Are there changes that you might make to your product/service line that can help to accelerate cost savings?

Can you innovate like mad -- thinking about what you do and how you do it -- to generate cost savings for those who rely upon you?

Think about it in the context of any industry. If you are in travel/hospitality, and you offer cost savings with what you are selling, you've got a leg up on the competition. If you are selling a service, get the potential cost savings that the service provides out front, and clearly defined -- highlight them. If you are selling an industry solution, re-examine the cost savings that your solution provides -- and see what you can do to make them bigger.

Add value, drive down cost. Business is easy if you remember that.

Think about the phrase, and look for the innovation opportunity in it.

Hitting the floor running

I’m often, in my workshops and in coaching business leaders, looking at trends and how organisations  can adapt internally to position themselves to captilise on the opportunities. Much of that time currently is spent putting into perspective the fact that we've always had downturns; there's still plenty of growth opportunities. One thing is for sure, that applying creativity to those plans and making innovation the heart beat of an organisation, to hit the floor running when the ties loosen and things start to get moving again, isn’t just a nice thing to think about, or have, but is fundamental.

What has become evident is that probably the most pressing issue for leaders today is in bringing things back to the core. While uncertainty and chaos disrupts global markets, there continue to be the basic truths that still apply: understanding your industry, competition, skills requirements, the gap in capabilities, but most importantly understanding your customer and the ability to respond their requirements quickly and effectively, are the factors that will define any organisations’s future success. Thinking outside the box is all well and good But you still have to look in your own box too to see what really is there. But in a different way

So what can you do right now to make sure you are at least on the starting blocks when the pistol is fired?

Think expand.
In the current climate it undoubtedly is depressing and demoralising and it's all too easy right now to lose your motivation and direction. Don't let that happen! The future is out there still! So think opportunity: Apple, GM, (Bad example ;-)MIcosoft were all founded in periods of recession.

Check your reaction times
Agility is the key word. You have to have a team that can react to opportunities faster than the competition. That means giving them the freedom to make decisions, not bodychecked by internal processes and management pyramids. Allow them to take real responsibility for their own budgets and have fixed goal posts that everyone understands. Your people are better than you think. Let them think.

Immerse in creativity. 

Idea generation is now at warp speed- products are insect like in their life span.  but appear out of nowhere. Here today, gone tomorrow. Twitter didn’t ‘exist’ 12 months ago until Stephen Fry talked about it on national TV. Audio Boo is about to take it on head to head. Rapid product change is not just desirable its what is happening now: we don’t have choice in dealing with it, reacting to it and embracing it. We just have to face it.

Check your knowledge.
Your abililty to access ever more scarce, specialized skills will define your future success. It's your ability to establish a fast, agile, quick-to-assemble collaborative team that will define your ability to grab all the opportunity that is emerging out there. If you don’t have, it get it. Creative talent is your most valuable asset. Not mini-me’s and karoake ideation. Look outside your industry. A sign of a truly crap company, waiting like a dinosaur for the meteor to hit, is their recruitment advert which says must have xxx years experience in such and such an industry. The job that should be advertised in that company is for a new CEO .

Know thine enemies.
Where are the threats likely to be coming from? Could new business models, technologies, new regulatory , political or social trends impact your bottom line in a way that you hadn't thought of before? The biggest clothing retailers are now the supermarkets!

Scout for talent.
Heads and ideas are your most precious asset and are going to be a scarcer resource. Just as football team scout the playing field of the world you must do the same. And don’t look in the normal places such as the Universities; look outside, at the new entrepreneurs, the children in school enterprise clubs and develop the management skills to utilise these in the best way for them, not you. People leave bosses, they don’t leave companies. The rewards in developing your talent pool are way above any ROI calculation. 


Define your voice.
You have to keep people focused on the future. Leadership is all about keeping your team focused on opportunity and goals, and then carrying the water for them to deliver. Positivity, talking about the future and consistency reinforce that. If you waver, so will they and then you are on pushing a snowball up a volcano.

This is a tough time for people who don’t like change.

Which is the most successful company in your sector? Depends what you mean by success of course. The chances are it’s the one that applies imagination and creativity to meet their customer needs.

Who is the most valuable person in your business?
It’s the girl or guy who actively think, and then helps others to think and provide solutions. Sometimes referred to as the mavericks, rebels, oddballs - they probably have a surfboard strung up over their desk. Sweeping stereotype there but my apologies. I just liked the image in my head.

And who is the happiest person you know? Again what do we mean by happy? I'd venture that it is the one person you know who has found the point where their passions and talents meet.

What do all the three have in common? Well apart from feeling very proud of themselves, and so they should, you could say that each has found a way to plug into and use their creative power within themselves.

But, before we go on, let me tell you what creativity isn’t.

The word creativity has been hijacked somewhere along the line. Its use now is as a catchall, encompassing word, sometimes applied in a slightly derogatory way especially when used by those who ‘don’t get it’ to describe the slightly bohemian, hippyfied amongst us or those people who march to a different drum - It is used as both and adjective and a verb those that write paint, play, dance, sculpt, do stuff with their hands, generally hang around at Hobbycraft. It is often accompanied by a slight shaking of an exasperated head. We have a guy in Barnsley who wears shorts, knee high scarlet socks and matching bobble hat every day of the year; He is just brilliant and you can see him marching proudly around our shopping centre almost everyday in any weather. Is he creative or just weird? Bit of both really

So here is my view; It's so much broader than that - you just can't describe just how broad an impact it has made and will continue to make in our World.

Creativity is what happens when imagination has focus; innovation is what happens when creativity has a bottom line; enterprise is what happens when innovation meets ability, entreprenurship is what happens when all the aforementioned are put on the same cart and passion becomes the fuel.

And, if you ask most entrapraneurs, which is what I do a lot in my innovator workshops ; after they get over the shock of realising that they can actually make money from something they love most will say that it’s the fulfillment of creating something from nothing that makes them warm and fuzzy. And then it’s a compulsion to do it again and again. They like the money too, obviously. Now that is creativity. OK it’s a bit of simple analysis I grant you but at least it gets you thinking. And lets me move on a bit.

To this bit actually - There are roughly 6000 languages spoken in the World, ( although we have just lost Manx apparently) These weren’t dreamt up spontaneously by the dictionary compilers or an infinite number of blindfold monkeys with typewriters but by humanity's inherent ability to create. There is a glorious bloke down my road who has some fantastic flower beds. Bob at Number 48 is linked directly, in so many ways both genetically (Obviously as I now know from the current avalanche of of books articles and programmes on the subject) and spiritually, to another eminent biologist and current media flavour of the year, Charles Darwin - Why does it take an anniversary to remind us just how blooming remarkable people are. Each, in their own way, required a certain spark to illuminate, the ability to look at things in a different way, to see a new pattern.

But I am digressing slightly. Why is creativity or innovation so vital and especially now in our current economic and social conditions? Well some would say the current situation is largely the result of 'karaoke' thinking in the banking industry, an exercise in bandwagon riding over the edge of a cliff as it happens and innovation impotence. The old ways, methods and rule books are having to be torn up. The impact and success of companies will now depend on as much as the ethical way they do business, their CSR programmes and how they manage their customer relationships to establish trust and credibility as much as the value of product or service they market. Innovation and different thinking has never been so keenly needed to be enabled universally, not just by individuals but by every public and private organisation.

Innovative companies attract innovative thinkers which contributes to them becoming more innovative and attracts the….so the cycle goes on. What are you doing to day to address the innovation gap?

You may like to reflect on this. ‘Creativity can be applied to any aspect of human endeavor and enterprise’. Well there is brassy and bold statement. Certainly it can be used to improve or change a process, or a product, or a service, or to improve a relationship.

For what its worth I beleive that anyone can be creative. the label 'creativity' applies to just any progressive thinking. The creative superstar starts to think where the others stop. They break out of pattern, they zig while the others zag. You both get there in the end but they go a different route. By doing so they uniquely separate themselves out from the rest. And, curiously they appear to have a hell of a lot more fun and fulfillment than the zaggers in doing so. The happiest person you know? Maybe, probably.

The really good news, and this is really, really good news, is that anyone and any organisation can learn to harness creativity in all its manifestations. Its not hard. Learning to unleash your creativity is like learning to play golf. We can all swing a club and hit a ball ( except my mum) but that every so often anyone can connect and hit that one beautiful shot. It is the promise of repeating that shot that keeps us coming back for more. Everyone has that in them, the possibility to hit a hole-in-one but…. not all of us can be Tiger Woods. Creativity requires practice and the more you practice the better you get. But somebody has to show you how to do it right to start off or help you so you can experience that feeling of the sweet sound of connection and power as the ball flies into the sky often as possible.

Alternatively you and your colleagues can be (un)happy with your lot,and sit feeling sorry for yourself, quietly fermenting in the culture of mediocrity. Conformity and risk aversion has come home to roost and he is a big, big turkey with a bad attitude.

If you were to ask me, and I hope you are, embracing creativity and innovation, at its fundamental core, is the recognition of the fact that that we don’t know everything but it’s really fun trying to. Well that’s the answer I would give today, but I’m not sure about tomorrow. None of us are. That is the point. But what I am sure of is that the only people who will lead us out of this mess are those that can truly embrace change, and apply their creativity muscles.

Darwin was right on so many levels. We have before our own eyes proof that it is not the Survival of the Fattest. It is those that can adapt most quickly to opportunities that survive and flourish. And we have a tool that surpasses every other leaping, flying, jumping, seeing, skill. Our minds. An incredible tool that can visualise a Billion futures and a Billion solutions. We had better start learning how to use them again.

Innovation handbook for CFO's

With over 25 years experience of throwing myself at brick walls of various heights and thickness, trying to develop a culture of innovation and creativity in a wide range or organisations I can say, without any shred of doubt, that the biggest barrier to establishing an innovation culture is convincing senior management of its value, and exactly how to measure its impact to justify investment.

Less than 1% of companies have any innovation performance metrics and reporting systems in place but that 1% are the top performers in their sectors A coincidence maybe. Are you mad?

The word cloud below illustrates some of the key  considerations and serves as a memory jogger for senior management. Or, you can simply carry on as you are, and watch as your competitors harness their innovation and creative talent and burst out of the recession first, leaving you trailing in their wake.  

I know what I'm doing today.